What is the total number of classes in .NET? The number that is in the downloaded runtime for .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5 SP1.
We are writing a scientific paper about an application that is based on .NET and currently state that there are more than 6000 classes. But I am not sure if this is the correct number.
For instance this page states the number of assemblies, namespaces, methods, etc., but not the number of classes.
Test platform: Windows XP 64 bit SP2, 8 GB RAM.
Update 4: Our paper has been published! I used 9911 for the number of classes (see update 3 below). The journal is Journal of Proteome Research and the title is: "MSQuant, an Open Source Platform for Mass Spectrometry-Based Quantitative Proteomics". Unfortunately the full text of the paper is not freely available, only the abstract.
Update 3: I think I have come very close to a solution now: 9911 public classes for .NET 3.5 SP1. Extending on update 1, I have made the function recursive and extended it so the number of types, classes and public classes are reported for any sub-folder and its subfolders. Running this on C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET gives 40414 types, only 0.2 % from the number in the referenced article. Full transcript - HTML source is tab separated so it can be imported into a spreadsheet, e.g. .net